The Third Mountain
Looking back on it from here it seems impossible: To have been there without you; to have been there alone and yet to fully believe in our shared memory.
The first mountain wasn’t a mountain at all – it was a towering palace buried beneath dirt hauled by slaves half a millennium before. The scale seems impossible and yet all the ugliness and beauty of it was perpetrated by human beings who loved and dreamed and mourned like you do now. Did they marvel at it too despite the blood and bones shed and broken, even their own? Even their children’s? Today it is covered by mist and flowers, not one trace of a single ghost.
The second mountain may or may not have been a mountain. I don’t know how these things are defined or where the boundaries are. There are a million pictures of it taken from the spot on which you stand but you never saw it from there. You waited for the clouds to lift; they never did. You only ever saw it from a bus on the way home.
The third mountain is a mountain but it can’t be seen, just felt. It is the ache in your calves as you try to climb it. It is the lasting strength you gain. It goes everywhere you do while you are here and flies back home inside you. It waits for you at the airport. It left with you, both ways; it came with you, both ways.
It leans in as you approach it and whispers: Welcome home.
Puebla, Mexico 2018
The first mountain wasn’t a mountain at all – it was a towering palace buried beneath dirt hauled by slaves half a millennium before. The scale seems impossible and yet all the ugliness and beauty of it was perpetrated by human beings who loved and dreamed and mourned like you do now. Did they marvel at it too despite the blood and bones shed and broken, even their own? Even their children’s? Today it is covered by mist and flowers, not one trace of a single ghost.
The second mountain may or may not have been a mountain. I don’t know how these things are defined or where the boundaries are. There are a million pictures of it taken from the spot on which you stand but you never saw it from there. You waited for the clouds to lift; they never did. You only ever saw it from a bus on the way home.
The third mountain is a mountain but it can’t be seen, just felt. It is the ache in your calves as you try to climb it. It is the lasting strength you gain. It goes everywhere you do while you are here and flies back home inside you. It waits for you at the airport. It left with you, both ways; it came with you, both ways.
It leans in as you approach it and whispers: Welcome home.
Puebla, Mexico 2018